The Campaign of France, 1814: the Six Days (NAP0001)

The campaign of France, winter 1814

It is snowing. The Emperor rides past at a walk on a white horse, in the grey overcoat; around him the bearskins of the Guard, a chasseur in a red pelisse, an officer in a crested helmet. And on the left, cheering, soldiers in greatcoats who are not yet twenty. The subject of this plate is the contrast between the two groups, and it is not decorative: it is the whole campaign.

The “Marie-Louises”

They were named after the Empress who signed the conscription decrees in her husband’s absence. Classes called up early, boys of seventeen and eighteen trained in a few weeks. The veterans were in Russia and Germany, or locked up in Spanish garrisons. In 1814 France sent its adolescents into the field stiffened by what was left of the Guard — the two halves of this picture.

The best-handled campaign

Six weeks, outnumbered three to one or worse, and Napoleon manoeuvred on interior lines and struck the allied columns one at a time: Champaubert, Montmirail, Vauchamps, Montereau. Many historians consider it his finest campaign — the one where the ratio between means and results is the highest of his career.

And why it achieved nothing

Because you do not win a war by winning battles when the enemy has three armies and you have one. Every victory cost men who could not be replaced; every allied defeat was made good within a week. The coalition eventually stopped chasing him and simply marched on Paris, which capitulated on 31 March. It is the clearest demonstration available that tactical superiority does not compensate for strategic arithmetic.

The same coat

The grey coat in this plate is the one from Marengo, fourteen years earlier. There, a general of thirty gambling his political future on a single afternoon; here, an emperor of forty-four defending his own country with children. The same object at the two ends of the story — which is why it is worth noticing.